


Revolutions of thoughts

by winterysomnium



Category: DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Artificial Intelligence, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 11:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1119291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterysomnium/pseuds/winterysomnium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Will you teach me how to breathe?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Revolutions of thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> Bruce is one year away from Dad jokes, Jason is overly attached to sun screen and Tim is dumb. Two of these are 100% accurate. Huge thanks to varebanos for the encouragement and ideas! I hope you will like this! Eye effects taken from this post (http://mechanical-destroyer.tumblr.com/post/70883217465). Prompted by heartslogos on tumblr.

_spring; day; street_

Jason wipes his nose, glances up at the TV through the screen of muddy glass and clean dust and sun, tugs the cotton, grey sleeve he calculates as soft and pliant and awkward to put on if you’re damp or scared up into the faded moon of his palm and wipes it again, sniffles as if he’s the boy whose nose is runny and his temperature has risen to those of a bird’s blood, whose hair is limp with water; smoke, fog — _air_ appearing in front of his mouth.

He tries again but the sleeve stays dry, without a hint of anything that could’ve dripped or could’ve been wiped on it, though as he looks into the double sided, badly done mirror he thinks glass is, he sees his nose is a pinkish rose now, the tip and the sides, as pink as his mouth when he eats strawberries or rubs his hand over them; his body responded to the hope.

He smiles, presses it to the glass, waits for the smoke to sift through his mouth and to cling on the window too, tries to push his chest out like he’s seen everyone do, the lady with the toddler, the shopkeeper as he blew away a hair from his forehead, even the boy on TV who kept running down a street.

Nothing.

“Fair!” he yells, kicks the wall and turns away from another house that betrayed him, another window that won’t dampen under his warmth.

He keeps his head down and his hood up, hides the ears that never get freckled even when he’s in the sun all day, even if their shape is round and pretty and human.

He wants to go to the places that treat him right, to the trees and stray cats who let him pet their ears, who leave fur between his fingers, who like his warmth he centers in his chest and who don’t wonder why he’s with them, where he’s never been, who he’s never met.

He wants to run there but his shoulder gets touched, his head rises in response and his feet stumble; he bumps into — someone.

The someone leans in, touches the hood and slides it down Jason’s unwashed, messy head, focuses on his eyes, on the lit teal green Jason knows rounds his pupil, knows that dots squares into his eyes.

He breathes, too. Under his clothes and under his skin, under his muscles there’s the tissue that can expand the way Jason’s didn’t learn to, didn’t manage to copy those inner mechanisms of human’s stupid, wonderful breathing and Jason’s angry, angry that this person has the things he doesn’t.

(A real, genuine, honest to god heartbeat.)

“What’s your name?” the someone asks, eyes focused on Jason’s defiant frown, his crossed, artificial bones.

“Jason. What isn’t yours?” he answers, hopes that he’s standing taller, that there’s nothing fake or damaged escaping through his throat.

“… You’re confusing negatives,” the someone says, surprised, bewildered; details on in everything about Jason he can see —

the grey hoodie, the jeans nearly washed into nothing with street dust, the sneakers that still have stickers of sizes and Jason’s prototype under his feet — and he asks: “What were you doing in front of that shop? I’ve seen you looking at the TV.” and it only forces anger higher up Jason’s mouth.

“It’s any of your business.”

“Were you imitating that boy?”

“I… I … caught a cold. My nose is a runny nose. It runs, always.”

And Jason doesn’t do panic. He doesn’t hesitate. But right now he’s both, wiping his nose like it’s doing something that requires his sleeve, steps away from the someone who looks at him as if he’s seen something lost in time, as if something dear got placed into his hands and Jason feels wary, _scared_ of a person who’s interested in what he does or doesn’t do.

“My name is Bruce. Bruce Wayne. I specialize in things — _beings_ like you. I’d like to know you better. You’re alone right now, aren’t you, Jason? I could help you. ”

And Jason thinks — thinks in the manner he overheard people say to think — he thinks about trust, about people who smell like flowers and oil, thinks about kind hands and this someone who doesn’t smile but didn’t hesitate to touch his shoulder, who isn’t afraid of the dirt on his knees or the clear, messy confusion that became his thoughts and articulation, who doesn’t frown when he imitates his limbs.

He thinks and then finds a sentence, right on the whole of his tongue.

“Will you teach me how to breathe?”

—-

_spring, that day, bedroom_

“He doesn’t trust me.”

“But sir, an AI like him can’t _not_ trust you.”

“I know, Alfred. Isn’t it amazing?”

—-

_summer, afternoon, the gardens_

The wind groans low above his head, gets tangled up in the traps of the house, the shapes Jason can give names to now, can pretend the wind feeds his blood with saturation, powers his cells and makes his thoughts live too, makes them solidify like paper, like the tincture of words or hiccups of music, like he’s the missing piece to the world.

He’s been in between the roof and the walls with tapestry and sceneries that won’t move or melt for a month, for three more weeks after, he cut triangles into fruits and he drank cold drinks that made his mouth numb and coloured, his eyes became liars and his lungs fakers, he laughed at a joke in Bruce’s newspaper that wasn’t a joke at all, got his hair cut and the numbers underneath his feet disappeared.

The house isn’t a garden or a street though and after nights under a blanket and behind windows that won’t open unless you break their body, Jason — lacked air.

Lacked branches and animal fur on his clothes, lacked the scent of dirt under and in his nose, lacked the space he couldn’t begin to count the vastness of, the space that was a sense of _belong._

He — he missed.

“Missed the point, probably,” he says, for himself, in that low, weird tone of a voice Alfred describes as _grumbling,_ in the sounds thunder makes — or was that a purely human thing?

Biting his way through his pork sandwich, Jason follows a string of yellowed grass, a pattern that leads to another yellow, red dipped place, leads to open mouthed grounds and huddled trees and trees that expand, leads to a house that tries to stand as tall as theirs and —

to a boy.

A boy in a tree, a tree with dry, rough hips and arms that lay open, lay numb as their tips struggle to offer their fingers to the clouds, a boy that crowns the root of the tallest, highest struggler, a boy whose face is a palette of a shy painter, pale, blue, dark, his eyelids hiding his eyes in butterfly flutter intervals and his hands have the same dirt Jason’s used to, only it’s fresh and wanted and sweet and the boy’s haphazard, cut jeans and baggy shirt are moving as he stands up and says “Hello,” watches Jason as he shoves the rest of his sandwich into the confines of his mouth, as he mumbles a “Hello!” back, both partly scared, partly thrilled by the other’s undeniable, living presence.

“My name is Tim.”

“Jason. Don’t you like trees?” he asks, curious and aching, the back of his neck strained as he presses his head back even more, as he stares so long Tim’s stillness starts to blur, starts to lose its sharp contour.

The boy frowns. “That’s a weird question.”

“Why would it be?”

“Have you met me before? Or seen me?” he asks and Jason’s data whisper to shake his head, left to right to left, but there’s a part of his mind that trembles with doubt of Tim being a projection, a wish of that boy on TV, a friend others don’t see and that human children talk to, that human children cling to and so he only says a shaped, slow “No.” and Tim huffs, looks up from Jason’s tied sneakers to his cut hair and says: “Then you can’t ask as if you already know that I like trees!” and then his hips move to one side, his bone cocked and the other weighted by the pressure he shoved on its top; his shoes send a ruin of a wooden cloud falling down the tree.

(Jason watches, thinks that this is how he has seen a girl fall down a cliff, with the same clouds foretelling her rough descend, thinks that Tim might want to fall down too.)

“You climbed on a tree,” he says, and Tim ducks under the words.

“… I wanted to try. Don’t you try new things?”

“Like brussel sprouts?” Jason tries and Tim laughs, grimaces after his smile softens to his lips.

“ _No one_ wants to try those.”

“I like _potatoes?”_

“Do you like _trees?”_

“Kinda.”

And now Tim looks like _he’s_ thinking, moving his thoughts from one side of his body to the other, like he’s about to share something that colours his expression into sheepishness and embarrassed layers, like he’s decided Jason is the person he can allow to know.

“Do you know how to climb _down_ one? I’m sort of… stuck,” Tim confesses, the tips of his ears colour to sunburns and so do his cheeks, he’s smiling like he’s in a situation that will become a joke later on, once it passes, once it stops being scary.

“Stuck?” Jason repeats, blinks, too slow and fragmented, and Tim repeats after him too, nodding with a hint of amused fear.

“Stuck.”

So Jason runs to the storage through the yellow grass, carries a ladder pressed to his side that rubs a raw spot on his skin and brings it up to the tree, test proofs it by climbing to Tim, Tim who is now crouching, meets Tim’s scent halfway up his chest.

Tim’s eleven, has a fragrance, and isn’t a projection of Jason’s lonely thoughts.

(And Jason’s palm feels strangely, newly damp.)

—-

_autumn, noon, the lab_

A storm runs down the stairs, a thunder of feet and heavy steps, fades down to a quiet resonance as the weight reaches Bruce’s level and a zipper gets undone behind Bruce’s back, a bullet of a sound, and as he turns in his chair, Jason throws his bag on the metal of the floor, crosses his arms and angrily stares at the circuits displayed on the screen, the internal organs that beat furiously under his skin.

“I’m never going to school again!!” is what comes out of the scowl on his mouth after a minute of breathy, shallow silence between the two of them and Bruce is grounded by the return of the thought he doesn’t expect, forgets every time until Jason strays out of his program, out of the strict, set AI rules.

It’s a reminder that Bruce isn’t this boy’s mechanic, isn’t a researcher or something as vulgar as an owner, that he’s someone who steps beyond those easy boundaries, beyond ordering the boy to suck it up, beyond the simple _I’ll make you like it then_.

“I’m the sole artificial intelligence there! There isn’t a single fellow AI!” Jason shouts, paces to his bag and back to the panel that holds Bruce’s keyboard and the cup that’s always halfway full, paces like the movement could soothe him, could subdue any residues of what he’s feeling.

Bruce swallows a heavy sigh, compresses it deep in his lungs and answers Jason’s distress. “Yes, I am aware of that, Jason. And I told you not to expect to see any of your kind either, just yesterday. Remember?”

Jason paces again, stops in front of Bruce and throws his arms out and with a misplaced moment of pride, Bruce thinks that Jason’s gestures are impeccable.

“Yes but — I hoped — I thought — I’m — … I’m a _bad_ AI, aren’t I? A screw up! I can’t talk properly too.” Jason deflates, seems to hang on a loose string, quiets down like an ending song, like a breathless voice, echoes of a cough.

Bruce slides closer to the edge of his chair and reaches to the boy’s shoulders, clasps his palm around Jason’s skin, too big compared to Jason’s own, to Jason’s nimble bones.

“You’re a very _special_ AI, Jason. Very, _very_ special. That doesn’t make you _bad._ I’m sure you’ll be able to find friends even between human kids. Friends like Tim.”

“But there’s _no one_ like Tim.”

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t make them bad either,” Bruce answers, squeezes his shoulder and presses on a smile, sees a flicker of green shine in Jason’s right eye, lowers his hand back to the handle of the chair.

“I’ll call your school and excuse you from the rest of your classes. Take your bag and tell Alfred you’ll have lunch with us,” he says, turns back to the overlap of the mechanics, watches Jason nod at the corner of his vision, hears him take the bag and hoist it up on his shoulder, and as he places his foot on the first step of the staircase, Jason stops, hesitates, quietly calls out.

“Hey.” he fumbles, looks to the side and then smiles that happy, radiant way kids can and AIs shouldn’t, looks at the whole of Bruce’s presence. “Thanks, Dad.” and then he rushes upstairs, leaves Bruce surrounded by dead plastics and iron that he’s teaching to speak, leaves him with a source of affection expanding through his cells, leaves him unable to work that day at all.

—-

_winter, afternoon, the outside; two years after_

Twelve months ago, Tim lost his voice. He wouldn’t speak for a week, carried a notebook with blue lined pages and a black pen he had to wet with the tip of his tongue on the end of the fifth day to keep it from disappearing, wrote notes he folded into thick, uneven squares and threw them at Jason’s head or his chest, made Jason talk in monologues with a paper and fading ink, nearly drowned in hot chocolate when Jason told him about his day and it went all the way up his nose, and then he pushed Jason into the fall Jason felt through his stomach first, a nervous warmth that resembled feeling ill, a clean, endless feeling.

It was the mute, one sided conversations, the way Tim flicked Jason’s forehead with his fingers, how he tripped onto his lap with a high pitched yelp, it was when he wrote

_how come I never heard you sing?_

it was when he lingered close, their shoulders n inhale away.

Jason wonders if that is how it works. If love and affection happens when one person is mute and dependent on letters to transfer their intentions, if it becomes a connection through the contract of sound and vision and if he pretended to lose his voice, if it would make Tim fall too, if he would find the second, third layer of Jason he uncovered on Tim when he was silent, if he would sing along the radio too, if Jason would find his voice in the laughter Tim’s song would force to get out of his mouth, if every person goes through a moment like this.

Except out of all the things Jason has lost, he has never lost his voice and in a quiet, intimate tone, twelve months later, Tim says: “I think I might have a girlfriend. I mean. I’m pretty sure I do.” and looks at Jason and Jason feels a strange numbness in his toes, in his teeth, in everything that isn’t bone.

(And maybe he hit the ground. Maybe he’s — just happy.)

“That’s great! Who is she?” he tumbles out of his mouth, the confusion of good and not good adjectives now a secret blessing because the cheerfulness is a push he has to force out of his lungs so heavily he feels damp with the pressure, doesn’t need the answer so he quickly lies, says: “I — I have a girlfriend too!” and crosses his fingers that it will work, that it will push the conversation to someone else, away from the girlfriend, from the enemy, from the thief.

Tim seems confused alright and that’s one of the things about Tim, his expressions speak before his mouth and they aren’t see through but familiar, known to someone like Jason who’s been learning their meanings for over two years and he’s hesitant to let someone else know, to let someone know Tim better than he does, scared of someone learning faster, better, learning how Tim works to Tim’s last quirk, to Tim’s last whispered nights.

“You do? Why didn’t you tell me?” Tim asks, a bit suspicious, a bit confused and completely beautiful, with his hair curled to waves by wet snow and hands stuck in pockets because he forgot his gloves in Jason’s room, earlier, hours from now, sitting close and surrounded by winter, by the cold mist of the afternoon hour.

“She’s um … she’s from the sea. I mean overseas. She lives overseas. I don’t lie,” Jason says, watches Tim’s expression shift again, change to a somewhat bemused, somewhat affectionate smile.

“I can tell when you _do_ though. Jason, you’re still my best friend. Girlfriend or not. I promise.”

“Promise on _what?”_

“How about — I promise on my first edition Robin issue 17.”

And Jason had to learn to not tell the truth too, had to practice how to smuggle his feelings by Tim every day, nearly forgot that he wanted Tim more than that, wanted him in ways an AI never should experience or know about either, in ways that hurt to be silent about. So he nods, says: “Alright. Cool. ” and then, when he sees a strange, subtle anticipation on Tim’s face, he shoves his humanity even lower into his throat and with fake, smug smirk, he asks:

“So. What is her name?”

—-

_winter, dinner time, the Manor_

“Is something wrong, Jason? You’re not eating.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“You didn’t eat any tomatoes. You like those, am I correct?”

“Of course you’re _correct,_ Dad. It’s in my _basic program_ to like them.”

“It’s something else then.”

Jason throws out a frustrated, unintelligible sound, pushes his chair away from the table and glares at his plate, frowning as if a stone got placed onto the inner sides of his eyebrows, as if he wouldn’t lift them again. “It’s just — it’s just that — being human sucks triangles!!” he yells and Bruce frowns,

sets his voice to a chiding tone.

“Jason!”

“It’s true! Being happy feels _awful!”_ he shouts and Bruce pauses at this, clears his throat as if it would help clean his words and thoughts too, as if it’s more than a habit, more than a glitch of anxieties. “Are you sure that what you’re feeling is happiness?” he asks, carefully, but Jason reacts angrily anyway, reacts like a hurt, aching animal.

“Yes! I mean — when a friend tells you they have a girlfriend, you’re supposed to be happy for them, _correct?!”_ he imitates Bruce’s words mockingly and slowly, a thing about Jason and girls and dates starts to click into place, starts to fit in to Bruce’s map of thoughts.

“Tim has a girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you think about her?” is what he asks and

“I think she should move overseas.” is Jason’s immediate answer, sulky and half defiant, half a huff, the moment before a kid starts to cry. Bruce sighs.

“I don’t think you’re feeling happy, Jason. I don’t think you’re feeling happy at all.”

—-

_spring, after school, Tim’s room; a year later_

The symmetry between Tim’s hands is broken, the branched graft of his knuckles relaxed on one side and pushed into a full fist on the other, one silent and the other talking and when Jason puts his weight on his elbows and presses them to the back of Tim’s chair, Tim holds up a cigarette, messily wrapped in those soft, pliant packages kids at Jason’s school dump into their pockets every morning, and says:

“Kon gave this to me yesterday after lunch.” says and Jason reads the smile, the mischief of curiosity, the _can’t_ ’s watching behind the pause of Tim’s neck, sliding down Tim’s shoulder blades, dripping to the fist he unfolds as he asks: “Do we smoke it?” touching the filter with his thumb and Jason imagines the kiss of it, the press of it against his mouth, Tim’s thumb and fire and dying through the smoke, shrugs because Tim’s appeal for it is smoking and Jason’s is kissing Tim’s essence left on it, shrugs because selfish desires shouldn’t lead on rebellion, not when it’s Jason’s, not when intimacy, _touches_ are what would be exposed.

But Tim says: “We should smoke it.” anyway, opens a window first, presses the cigarette between his fingers and pushes it too far into his lips second and hands Jason the lighter, plastic and cheaper than the smoke and Jason ignites Tim’s throat.

“Do you feel more alive now?” he asks and Tim looks at his face, nose and eyes and then inhales in a rush and exhales in coughs, rasps: “Yes. No. Crap. Okay. I’ll try again.” and he does, takes three more smokefuls and then he pushes the cigarette into Jason’s hands, says: “I feel ill” and awkwardly runs to the bathroom door close to his bookshelves, far from his bed and sits on the floor, waiting above the toilet, turning to look at Jason when nothing happens.

“I feel alive enough to die now, really,” Tim says and then laughs because he’s stupid and because Jason is even dumber he tries the cigarette too, sucks in the smoke and Tim’s lips and the wetness stuck on the brim and then lets it leave, lets it flow out of his system and — there’s no effect.

He’s nicotine less, he’s Tim less, he’s less alive than everyone in this house, a machine that talks and so he talks, blurts out

“It doesn’t do nothing.” puts it out against the back of a glass he was drinking soda from and then changes his words, lies so he can sit on the floor next to Tim, lies so he doesn’t feel so empty.

“Actually, fuck. I feel ill too.”

—-

_summer, hours after noon, the Manor, three months later_

“Hello, Mr. Wayne.” Tim greets politely and his smile focuses on Bruce as he walks through the glass door to get to the cooler, shadowed rooms inside, away from the noonish sun and the heat of the ground that seeps from the concrete and stone, that latches onto everyone’s feet and grows along their skin, especially since he’s in a heavy cotton shirt and black, thick dress pants while Tim and Jason are one step away from being naked and damp from the chlorine water of the pool, two waterfalls who dry to soil.

“Hello, Tim,” he answers, notes the bottle of lotion in Tim’s hand and Jason’s exposed back and adds, with a subtle, but distinctive smirk: “Don’t forget his ears. He gets _terribly_ sunburned there.” which earns him a narrow, pointed glare and an embarrassed _“Dad!”_ aimed at him from Jason’s mouth, but an allied, loyal “Roger that.” from Tim, and because he should show off the responsible, mature person he’s supposed to be, he says, as he’s leaving:

“And don’t forget to do your homework.”

which prompts another, embarrassed yell:

“Jesus, Dad, it’s _summer!”_

—-

_summer, night, Jason’s room, that day_

Alfred prepared a mattress with a thin, sheet blanket and small, pale pillow at the foot of Jason’s bed and Tim plopped on it when they got back from the pool, left a damp imprint of his hair and neck and the top of his shoulders on the pillow, left his bag next to it but climbed onto Jason’s elevated, unmade bed, placed the tips of his cold, real fingers onto Jason’s back, in a line that wasn’t even or steady, played a symphony across Jason’s vertebras, across the back of his heart and then buttoned down Jason’s breath, formed words without meaning and meanings without shapes, lingered, said: “Goodnight, Jason.” and turned away, curled onto his side like a shy child, fell into a dream and Jason finds himself like this, breathless, a storm in his belly as he says: “ ‘night,” as he doesn’t dare to move, Tim’s palms slick with sun screen rubbing his shoulders overlapping with the quiet, braille song Tim put into his skin, or maybe it was poetry, a provocation, maybe it was _I know how you feel_ , maybe it wasn’t anything at all.

And as he sleeps, he’s Tim’s mouth on the back of his neck, his tongue on his spine, he’s pressed to Tim’s erection, he’s the thrust of his bones, the wetness of sweat, of water and salt and he’s the struggle to stay quiet, quieter than the night, than Tim’s hitched sounds, than the press of fingernails on his hips, than a shard of glass as it dries on the shore, than the sea he feels like, loud and unpredictable and not entirely in control.

(Not entirely human.)

And as he wakes up, there’s a wet, syrupy, uncomfortable stain drying on his pajamas, a matted texture to his damp again hair, an arm thrown over his side, the top of his elbow, the end of his soul.

(That is, if they installed one into him at all.)

—-

_summer’s end, day, Tim’s room, one year later_

When Jason’s life sinks, he tastes like chili, like strawberries and glass, warmed up beer he shared with Tim’s equally red, spicy lips, tastes like _fuck_ and _kiss_ and lies, tastes ill.

He records the inches of clusters of plates and glasses and Tim’s nervous fingers caught against his neck, records Tim’s thin sleeveless The Smiths shirt, his shorts and knees and then he’s nothing but a statue, he’s there when Tim says: “You know — I think that you’re — that you’re the most alive part of me.” and he’s there when Tim asks: “If you get what I mean.” and he’s there when Tim says: “Jason.”, says it right to his own mouth, he’s there when he says: “Fuck.” and when Tim presses his open mouth to his numb skull, when he moves against the pull of Tim’s wet kiss, when he tastes Tim’s lips as his tongue slips past them, when he’s moaning into Tim’s teeth, into his fingers and his fading breathing and he wants to, _needs_ to see the sky of Tim’s eyelashes, of his flickering blues, needs right _now_ and Tim needed the skyline of his face too, wanted to _see_ Jason too and it’s then, when he’s recovering, when he’s the sigh of a desert, the gasp of water, the second of unconsciousness when he loses his grip, loses his concentration and there’s glimmer, a reaction, a shine that he sees in Tim’s cloudless blue pigments and —

and then Tim goes numb, too.

It’s as if he’s decomposing, numb first, still after, detached at last, his fingers jerking away from Jason’s skin like a band aid, all at once, his feet only walking backwards and after seconds of quiet, stiff _nothing_ he says, nearly a hush, nearly a whisper, he says: “You’re not human.”

Stops, repeats, “You’re not human. You’re not — _you’re not fucking_ human!” and he takes the throat of the bottle and throws it across the room, spills beads of bitter foam and strings of wetness, spits: “I love a fucking _android!”_ and something salty and nasal slips into his voice as Jason thinks, thinks that he’s more than that. He’s more than detached, inhuman, dead. Wasn’t he the part that’s alive in Tim? Wasn’t he — wasn’t he —

“I’m _different!_ I’m _different_ from all of them!” he yells, as if being loud means more sincere, as if the pressure of words could get through Tim’s skull to his head, as if Tim trusts shouts and yelps more than quieter, hissing sounds.

“You’re _programmed_ to be you! You’re not _any_ different!” Tim yells right back and Jason wonders if today is when his speech is going to slip, when the mechanical parts of him will show.

(Show even more.)

“I _love_ you,” he says, firmly, presses the words to Tim’s ear but Tim flinches, backs three more steps away.

“You’re _programmed_ to love me. You know what the words _mean_ but you — you can’t _feel_ it. You can’t _feel_ it like _I_ do!”

“I _can!_ I swear I _can!”_

And then —Tim slumps, limply, dejectedly, settles his bones, adjusts to the heavy, sinking defeat.

“Then tell me Jason; how do I feel?” he looks up, up at Jason’s face, up his mouth and nose and eyes, stays and looks, waits for Jason fail.

There’s nothing Jason can say.

“I feel betrayed,” Tim answers, answers the question Jason couldn’t know the end of, and then Tim takes a few, small steps towards Jason and pushes, pushes, pushes Jason in strong, hurtful shoves.

“Just — get out,” he says as Jason reaches the border of the room, as his frame falls from Tim’s vicinity. “Get out. Get _out!”_

(And as the door closes, closes to Jason’s own, silent, betrayed heart, he feels something on the top of his mouth, feels an irritation that spreads from his nose, and as he wipes the tip of it with his sleeve, for the first time since he imitated the boy on TV, there’s a darkening, wet spot.)

—-

_the beginning of autumn, early evening, Manor’s doorstep_

Tim believes in the revolution of thoughts.

He believes in revulsion, rebellion and deterioration, believes that if an existence eats you up to an unbearable, exhausting point of being, you can fight against it. Can destroy its essence, its clammy presence, its stained evidence it left on your own skin and bones; that if you want to, aim to, _need_ to enough, you can wash it out of you.

It’s a destructive thought, though. Through and through and it’s _after_ when you see how it put mines under your skin, into your muscles, how it waits for someone to validate its persistent, undying, frustrating existence again and after you’ve won, how it’s about everyone else pushing it into the ground with you.

He doesn’t know how he couldn’t see it with Jason.

How he forgot.

How stupid you can get when you think someone’s there to hurt you, to wash you away, to desert you in a state of revolution.

Now the Manor’s a house he’s afraid of, Mr. Pennyworth stays in the door like a soldier, Tim’s the bloodstained scene of crime and Jason’s the body, it’s morbid and Tim stops letting his thoughts run away, breathes in like he’s about to dive for the bottom of the sea and asks, in a small voice that echoes to nothing:

“Is Mr. Wayne home?”

And the tone that answers is strict, detached — “He’s in the dining room right now. Is it something urgent?”—

and Tim feels its effect fall on his feet and shoulders but — he’s not intimidated anymore.

“Yes. It’s very urgent.”

After all, all he carries are apologies.

—-

What he got told still resonates through him, now that he’s standing at the surface of the space that has Jason as part of its theme, as the leitmotiv of its insides, a world with Jason that seems to be dimensions apart, seems to exist precisely because Tim’s not knocking on the door, because he’s not bleeding on its floors, but if he wants to stop the fight he has to make a sound, has to step inside the world and has to face Jason and whatever he’s feeling and there’s no one to make him move, no one to push him, so he does that on his own, knocks and opens the door and walks in and —

faces Jason.

Sitting on the bed, following Tim’s awkward, stiff movement, beautiful like a sculpture that survived the sea evaporating to deserts, survived the stifling dust of the ground, survived the acidic air and now’s wandering a garden, a house, Tim’s mind, wandering in his days, staying under his skin and Tim swallows, looks up into Jason’s frown and breathes out: “Jason.” and then does it again, chants in an abandoned rhythm, says: “Jason. _Jason._ I’m sorry. I’m — I’m such an idiot. I know I am.”

And Jason doesn’t answer but doesn’t move away either, doesn’t do that half turn when he’s upset or when he’s in pain, doesn’t give in and it’s — it’s exactly that. Jason lies, he laughs, he rolls his eyes and he’s in pain, he’s scared and brave and _he breathes_ —

“I was thinking that, that it’s so weird. How you talked. How you thought about things. You knew what was good and what was bad and you mixed it up all the time and — you’re funny. You’re truly, genuinely funny. And a thinker. And you have opinions. Strong ones too. And I’m sorry I doubted that. That I didn’t believe you. I’m … I’m really sorry.”

“Are you?” Jason moves, moves his mouth and Tim’s thoughts move with him, feel shallow and blank compared to Jason’s presence, to Jason’s pull.

“I am.”

Jason sighs, grabs a pillow and throws it at Tim’s head, waits until it slips down under Tim’s chin, until it shows his messy, bewildered expression.

“You’re an asshole. Do you know that?” he asks, huffs and resists the appeal of hitting Tim again, crosses his arms. “You’re also really fucking insensitive for someone who claims to be _human. And_ you suck at Scrabble. A lot.”

And Tim smiles, sheepish, hopeful, genuine. “I know.”

“Good. Because you do.”

And they’re both statuary now, fading with the setting sun, with no lamp’s shine, with Tim’s nervous jittering that’s prompting his fingers to shake, with Jason’s subtle frown that’s staying, they’re in between their own intentions until Tim asks, in a raspy whisper, asks: “Can I kiss you?” and Jason answers, a bit late, a bit metallic, with a flicker of green shaping up under his eyelid.

“Yeah. Yeah you can.”

—-

(Whatever he told you that he is feeling Tim, it’s true.)


End file.
